Sunshine
by infiniteviking
Summary: Ram sleeps over at the Bradleys', and Lora wakes him up for his first day in the User world. Gen, oneshot, gratuitous fluff. ;D


**Sunshine**

Lora Bradley had never seen Roy Kleinberg asleep in 1981, but was willing to bet that she now knew almost exactly what it would have looked like.

They'd barely gotten Ram home the other night before he conked out; something about trouble in the Outlands, fighting for far longer than the few minutes it had taken Sam to go in there and retrieve him, leaving him unharmed but in no condition to be whisked off to meet Roy right away. Ram had stared wide-eyed at everything, called her Yori, idolized Alan, and been in such an obvious state of about-to-fall-over-any-minute that she'd sent the boys off to play with their laser some more and bundled Ram into the guestroom with orders to get some rest before anything else happened. The hangdog looks on Sam and Alan's faces would brighten her memories for years to come.

As would this.

Lora padded across the room on bare feet, parking her coffee cup in a handy saucer on the nighttable as she sat down on the bed next to the sleeping program. He'd kicked off most of his blankets and was dozing on his stomach with his head nuzzled into one of the pillows and the sheet tangled at his waist. The sun had crept across the floor, thrown a narrow bar of light over his bare shoulders and highlighted the yellow-brown curls at the base of his neck; save for the pale tracery of circuit lines just under his skin, she could almost have been looking at Encom's former lead programmer across a span of over two decades.

Suppressing a smile, she ran her fingers through his hair and said lightly, "Good morning, sunshine. Time to get up."

"Hm... what?" Ram pushed himself up on one arm and then flopped over on his back, squinting and rubbing his eyes as his memory kicked in. "LoraPrime... Why am I dizzy?"

"Probably because you've been out like a light for over nine hours. And it's just Lora here; you can save my screenname for the Grid." She ruffled his curls again - they were just asking for it. Roy would have cracked one eye open, looked up at her with that skeptical half-smile of his and made some quip about not being five years old any more, thank you very much; his program, with no macho image to maintain (or at least none that Users would recognize as one), simply rocked his head back into the touch with a shy, sleepy grin that had her smiling in return. "Don't tell me programs never have a gradual restart back home."

"Yeah, but it's not like this." Ram's eyes had closed again, and his back arched as he stretched all the way down to his toes and then flopped back again in boneless bliss. "This is so comfortable. How do you Users ever get anything done?"

"It's a constant struggle," said Lora, chuckling, and Ram grinned up at her with all of Roy's youthful optimism shining out of his blue eyes, untouched by the heartbreaks of later years. God, he was so _young_, his smile as innocent as Jet's had been at that age; she had to fight off an impulse to hug him. Imprinting on your colleague's program: not exactly standard procedure.

"Did you dream?" she asked curiously. ISOs dreamed, but programs...? (She'd asked Tron once, but he'd avoided the question.)

"I think so. It was pretty colorful." Blinking up at the ceiling, he reached up into the sunbeam, marveling at the light and heat soaking into his hand. "Everything's bright all of a sudden. What's with all this radiation? Is it supposed to be like this?"

"Ask Quorra," said Lora dryly. "She'll tell you _all _about the sun."

"I will," he said decisively. Something about his face now, the eager curiosity and joy of discovery, reminded Lora strongly of the way Q reveled in anything new, and she suddenly wanted to stick the two of them in a room together just to watch Sam's expression when he was hit by the resulting cascade of cheerful enthusiasm.

She stood briskly, wondering if Roy's program would like donuts and hate sprouts as much as Yori had. "Okay, Ram. First you need to get dressed." He propped himself up on his elbows and followed her gesture to a stack of folded clothes on a chair; his outfit from the previous night was all in a heap and nothing of Alan's would have fit him, but Lora had gone on an early run and picked up a few things. "Clock's on the table, breakfast in five minutes, and the socks go on _under _the jeans, just so you know. I have to be at a conference in an hour, but don't worry, you won't be lonely."

"Yeah, last I checked we did have socks on the Grid." He reached over for the folded items, adding hopefully, "Will we be going to Encom after that?"

"Yes." Of course they'd have to smuggle him in the back way to avoid anyone who'd known Roy back in the old days, but Ram didn't have to know the details yet.

"Will Alan One be there?"

"Probably."

"Do I get to help with anything?"

"That depends," she laughed. That was going to be another interesting conversation, especially if Alan was involved, and she couldn't wait be there for it. "Do you have hands and can you read a line of text?"

Grinning unrepentantly, he swung his legs down to the floor and simply basked for a moment in the sunlight that glanced off his back and made a halo of his hair. Some programs, like some people, would probably adapt to the User world over time, growing jaded past noticing the things they'd found exciting and new the first time they arrived, but Lora had a feeling that Ram wouldn't be one of them.

"Hey, Lora... how come this shirt says _Flynn Lives_?"

"That's a long story for another day. Now c'mon, program. It's time to meet your maker."


End file.
